


Storytime

by osprey_archer



Series: Reciprocity Extras [12]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Bedtime Stories, Gen, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-23
Updated: 2018-12-23
Packaged: 2019-09-25 11:23:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17120450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/osprey_archer/pseuds/osprey_archer
Summary: Bucky tries to calm Steve down with an orphanage story. Steve searches it for hidden meanings.





	Storytime

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cat_marlowe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cat_marlowe/gifts).



> Thank you to littlerhymes for betaing this!
> 
> This story takes place sometime after [Taylor Swift](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3346733) in the main Reciprocity series.

A spot of turbulence woke Steve up. 

He was still dizzy, and it was very dark. He lay still, eyes and ears straining, until more turbulence caused the Quinjet to rattle and he remembered he was on the Bus. In sickbay. He was lying under a blanket and it was soft and warm, and he couldn’t see anything because the blanket was over his head. 

His head continued to revolve lazily – or that was what it felt like, anyway. So the Hydra nerve gas hadn’t worn off yet. 

There was a little creak next to him: the sound of someone shifting in a chair. Bucky was still there, then. Steve released his breath, feeling warm and sleepy. Bucky was here. He ought to get hurt more often just so Bucky would sit up beside him. Steve hadn’t slept this well since he and Bucky had joined Coulson’s team on the Bus. 

Steve pushed the blanket off his face. But the figure in the chair wasn’t Bucky. 

It was Coulson. 

Steve’s jaw locked. He couldn’t speak. He didn’t want to speak; he wanted to pull the blanket back over his face and go back to sleep, or pretend to sleep. 

Coulson’s face looked bluish in the light gleaming up from his tablet. Little blue rectangles reflected on his glasses when he looked up at Steve. Those glasses always made him look particularly harmless.

“Captain Rogers,” Coulson said. “How are you feeling?” 

Steve’s throat was so tight he wasn’t sure he could answer. But then he did speak, and what came out was: “Where is Bucky?” 

“I sent him to bed,” Coulson said. “He needed to sleep.”

His voice was as mild as ever, but Steve could hear the reproof in it. _He can’t sit up next to you forever, you selfish pig._ Steve should have thought of that. Of course Coulson…

Coulson sat in the chair, relaxed, his hands loosely clasped between his knees. Steve suddenly felt suffocated. “I need to go to the washroom.”

“Do you need help?”

Steve swung his legs out of bed. His head swooped ominously. “No.”

Steve lurched across the sick bay. He nearly fell into the washroom, and locked the door behind him and then sank to the floor, back to the door, trembling and dizzy. There was no room to stretch his legs. He drew them to his chest instead and hoped like hell there wasn’t a camera in here. Even Coulson wouldn’t bug the bathroom, would he?

Steve attempted to propel himself to his feet. The first time he fell back; the second, he grabbed onto the sink and leaned against it, clutching at the sides. His skin looked faintly greenish in the mirror above the sink. 

The Bus hit a spot of turbulence. Steve bent nearly double over the sink, clinging to it so he wouldn’t fall. He really shouldn’t be on his feet.

“Captain Rogers,” Coulson called. “Are you all right?”

Steve gagged. He made it to the toilet before he threw up.

Afterward, he splashed his face. His hands felt steadier. The dizziness had faded.

“I’m all right now,” he said, and came back out, and nearly fell on Coulson as he tried to aim himself onto the bed. He had no energy to get back under the covers.

Coulson disentangled the blanket from his limbs and pulled it over Steve. Steve tugged it a little higher, over his head, so the blanket covered his eyes. 

But he could hear the quiet rustle of Coulson’s suit as he shifted in his chair. The blanket was not very thick, and as Steve’s eyes adjusted, he could see the glimmer of Coulson’s tablet through the weave. He could even smell the faintest whiff of Coulson’s soap. It smelled clean and sharp. 

Steve drifted toward sleep. But he jerked awake again and again over the course of the night; and each time, Coulson still sat beside him. 

***

Steve must have fallen asleep eventually. When he woke up again, light streamed in through the Bus windows: the Bus had caught up with the sun. 

Bucky was back. He looked bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, of course. The night’s rest had done him good. 

“You sleep well?” he asked Steve.

“Coulson sat up with me.” He tried to say it cheerfully, but a strained, sullen edge came out.

Bucky regarded him silently for a moment – disappointed probably by Steve’s terrible acting. “Do you feel like breakfast?” he asked. 

“Not really,” Steve said. He didn’t feel hungry. But his empty stomach grumbled.

Bucky frowned. “I think you should eat breakfast,” he said.

“I’m not hungry,” Steve protested.

“I bet you’ll get hungry if I bring you breakfast. You’ll smell the bacon and the maple syrup on the waffles and all of a sudden you’ll realize you haven’t eaten since breakfast yesterday and you’ll want fifteen eggs.” 

Steve was beginning to feel hungry just at the description and he resented it. “I’m not hungry,” he insisted, more loudly, as if volume would make it true. 

“If you’ll eat, I’ll tell you a story,” Bucky said. 

“For Pete’s sake! I’m not six years old!” 

Bucky’s mouth turned down. He leaned back in his chair, legs stretched out, arms crossed over his chest, his hair falling in his face. “Fine,” he said sullenly, and then stood up. “I’ll get myself breakfast, then. You can just starve.”

Of course by the time Bucky got back, Steve _was_ starving. Bucky had filled a tray: a single plate loaded with layers of waffles and whipped cream and strawberries, a saucer heaped with bacon, a mug of coffee and another of hot chocolate and a glass of orange juice, and a bowl piled high with more fruit. “Hold this,” he told Steve, and he set the tray on Steve’s lap and hunted around the sickbay for – well, who knew. The smell of the orange juice rose up and filled Steve's nose, tart and sweet and irresistible. Steve's dry mouth lit up. Before he had even quite formulated the thought _I’m thirsty_ , he had drained the glass. 

There was no way to hide an entire empty glass, of course, so Steve figured he might as well eat. He started in on a small plate of scrambled eggs with sausage that he had hitherto overlooked. 

Bucky didn’t mention it when he sat back down. He left the tray balanced on Steve’s knees and stole blueberries from the fruit bowl and strips of bacon off the plate while Steve steadily munched through the waffles. 

“You used to eat like that in the orphanage,” Bucky said. “Just motor right through everything on your plate.”

Steve was on the last quarter of waffle by this point. He paused with his fork halfway through a strawberry. “I thought we lived on gruel in the orphanage,” he said. “Like Oliver Twist.” 

“We got nice things sometimes,” he said. “Like when the members of the Board were visiting. Or charitable ladies. They had to feed us something good then so the donors would be happy to fork over lots of money. Otherwise there would be nothing for the Director and his minions to steal later.”

“Right,” Steve said. “The donors didn’t notice we were skinny and wearing rags?”

“Maybe they kept a set of good clothes for us to put on when the donors visited,” Bucky said. “With big soft sweaters that made us look fatter. And anyone who looked particularly bad got sent to the sickbay, and they told the donors it was something infectious so they wouldn’t want to go see.”

“I’m amazed I didn’t get stuck in sickbay every single visit, then.” 

Bucky sighed as if Steve’s attempts to impose some kind of continuity on the orphanage stories were the trial of his life. “I snuck you out, doofus. I wasn’t going to let you miss meatloaf and ice cream and canned peaches. Probably that was the only thing that kept you alive so long, those dinners.” 

“Canned peaches,” said Steve. He was losing his appetite, but he nibbled on the last bite of bacon. He was so close to cleaning his plate. 

“One time,” said Bucky, “when it was the director’s birthday, we had a whole giant chocolate cake. There was enough for every single kid in the orphanage to have a slice.” 

Steve chewed mechanically. It was hard to swallow, but he followed it up by levering the last bite of waffles into his mouth anyway. Was there something behind this story? Some kind of coded warning about Coulson. Or even about breakfast?

Only Steve couldn’t figure it out. The food on the Bus was always good – that didn’t mean anything special. Did it? 

Steve’s head was beginning to spin dully again. He spit the half-chewed bite of waffle back onto the plate. 

“Your eyes bigger than your stomach again?” Bucky asked. “You ate too much of the director’s cake too. It was too rich after all that gruel, and you were up half the night throwing it up.”

“I’m tired,” Steve snapped. He hunkered down in bed. He nearly upended the tray, but Bucky rescued it at the last moment. “Don’t you ever get tired of the goddamn orphanage, Bucky? Give it a rest.” He dragged the blanket back over his head and pressed his face against the pillow. Even with his eyes closed, the room still seemed to be spinning, very slowly – or perhaps his brain was turning around in his head like a carousel. 

He could hear the soft rattle of the china as Bucky moved the tray – the unpleasant scrape of his metal fork slipping across the porcelain, Bucky’s muffled oath as it fell to the floor. Another rattle, the whoosh of the automatic door – and then silence. 

Steve pulled the blanket tighter. He should have been nicer about Bucky’s stupid stories. 

Throwing up the director’s cake – was that a reference to last night? Coulson had tried to do something nice for him, sitting up with him like that, and Steve hadn’t appreciated it. Had thrown up. 

Maybe Coulson was mad. 

Steve tried to turn it over in his brain, to think about it logically. But he was too tired to figure it out. 

The door whooshed open again. Steve’s ears pricked, listening, but the sickbay’s sound muffling floors made it impossible to interpret the interloper’s tread. Coulson’s soft footsteps, or Bucky’s heavy boots? 

“Steve.”

Bucky.

Steve tugged the blanket down to his nose so he could see. Bucky hadn’t sat down again. He stood next to Steve’s bed, his hands loose at his sides. He rubbed the palm of his right hand against his thigh, as if to wipe moisture away. 

“The stories just get away from me sometimes,” Bucky said. “It’s not interesting if nothing bad ever happens.” 

Steve pulled the blanket down further, uncovering his mouth. “Why do the bad things always have to happen to me?” he asked. 

“Who do you think they’re gonna happen to? The director of the orphanage?” There was a fine disdain in his voice at the very idea. 

“Maybe you could suffer once in a while,” Steve said peevishly. 

Bucky sighed. He eased himself down into the chair and leaned his head back, against the wall. “I guess it’s kind of kicking you while you’re down,” he said. “Making you suffer in a story when you’re already suffering out here, too.” 

Steve already wished he could take back his words. Like Bucky hadn’t suffered enough in his life. “Couldn’t we pull one over the director of the orphanage?” he asked. “Just once?”

Bucky stretched out his legs. He stretched his arms up above his head, and rubbed his left shoulder. “Well we did,” he said, “once. And he never found out it was us, and no one got punished.” 

“Yeah? What did we do?”

“Well,” said Bucky, drawing out the word, and Steve had the impression that he was making up the story as he went along – hoping for inspiration. “We scared a squirrel into the trustees’ meeting.”

“We – _what_?” 

“There were a bunch of big old oak trees right outside the director’s wing,” Bucky said, “which we weren’t supposed to climb.”

“Of course.”

“Only we climbed them all the time – ”

“Of course,” Steve said again, and Bucky gave him a frosty look, and Steve smiled his most angelic smile and fell silent. 

“And one time we climbed them, in the fall, when the leaves were all thick and golden, and we saw that the trustees were in the big meeting room. There were cut glass decanters of fine wine all down the table, and a trolley full of little cakes like we’d never get in the orphanage even on the director’s birthday.” 

“Ooooh.” This was indeed a prank Steve would have loved to play on someone particularly rich and odious when he was a boy. 

“We were sitting on a high branch looking down in,” Bucky went on, “and you were so mad you gave the branch a great big shake – and I guess you scared a squirrel, because all of a sudden it burst out of nowhere and went sprinting down the branch, and it jumped right in through the window right onto the table. It ran down the table, and all the trustees tried to swat it and instead just knocked the decanters over, and all that fine wine spilled right on the trustees’ fancy suits. So they started getting up from the table and knocking over their chairs and yelling, and one of them ran into the cart full of cakes, and knocked it over, and the cakes went flying right into the director.” 

Steve could just see it: it was almost as clear as an actual memory. All those well-upholstered men in suits that cost as much as a week’s worth of good meals at the orphanage, racing around the room like chickens with their heads cut off, and the director standing in the middle covered in icing and cake. 

“And what did we do?” Steve asked.

“Well,” said Bucky. “We climbed back down. Which was hard, ‘cause we were shaking fit to bust trying not to laugh. And we ran around the building till we were on the other side entirely, and then we hid behind the privets and laughed till our sides ached. And we told all the other kids, and we all laughed about it for weeks and weeks – and the director never knew.” 

“That’s nice,” Steve said. “He’s not omniscient after all.”

Bucky looked at him sharply. “He never was,” he said. “He never realized we used to sneak up to hide out in the pigeon coop, either, or all the food I stole for you, or – oh, lots of things. There’s almost nothing he _does_ know.” 

Which left Steve hopelessly confused again. Was the director not Coulson, then? Because Coulson knew everything, or just about. The walls had ears, after all. 

His brain had stopped spinning, but he felt tired again. He tugged at the blanket – it had slipped halfway down his chest somehow – and Bucky pulled it up firmly under his chin. “Go to sleep,” he ordered. 

“I will when I want to,” Steve muttered, rebellious. 

“Fine then,” Bucky told him. “You do that. Get the last of that Hydra gunk out of your system.” 

He settled back in the chair next to Steve. He didn’t have a tablet with him, or a book, or anything really to keep him entertained; but he looked as solid as the Rock of Gibraltar. Steve found himself drifting toward sleep. 

Then he jerked back awake. He pulled the blanket down to free his mouth and asked urgently, “You’ll stay?” 

“Sure,” Bucky said. He shrugged his shoulders. The metal one squeaked, like it needed to be oiled. “Got nothing better to do anyway.”


End file.
